Interstate 70 has had 35% fewer crashes this year than the same time last year. There were 5,145 crashes this time last year. Yet, in 2024 there have been only 3,387.
I-70 is not the only major Missouri highway that has seen a decrease. Interstate 55, in southeastern Missouri, had 1,242 crashes between January and August of 2023. This year I-55 has had 883 collisions. Similarly, U.S. 63 has seen a 41% decrease in crashes this year.
Missouri Department of Transportation State Highway Safety and Traffic Engineer Jon Nelson said the decline in crashes could be due to a number of reasons. He said behaviors like distracted driving and seatbelt use are factors.
“So it's really hard to pinpoint, you know, one or even two or three factors that might be leading to this reduction in crashes,” Nelson said “But hopefully it is a sign that, you know, people are making better choices behind the wheel.”
Last year, Gov. Mike Parson signed the Siddens Bening Hands-Free bill into law. It prohibits drivers from using handheld communication devices while driving.
According to the Missouri Department of Transportation, there were nearly 200,000 distracted driving-related crashes with at least 801 fatalities in Missouri between 2012 and 2021. A department press release states the trend in crashes prompted the law’s passing.
Nichole Morris, Research Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Human Factor Safety lab at the University of Minnesota, said there was a national reduction in fatal crashes before the pandemic.
“So, we had really kind of made 15 years of progress in driving down fatal crash rates,” she said “But after COVID, we had a tremendous uptick in fatal crashes nationwide.”
Morris said those years of progress may have been wiped out after the pandemic. Yet, 2022 and after has shown those rates start to settle.
“In 2023, we were starting to see things starting to — certainly not return to normal — but, we’re starting to see some easing of that unsettling trend that we were seeing nationwide.”
In terms of whether the Siddens Bening Hands-Free law is contributing to these low numbers, Morris said it depends on the buy-in from the public and the level of enforcement.
“A new law can really pack a punch in a bigger way if you have some high visibility enforcement so it's really clear that you have police out and they're looking for people violating this law,” she said. “That sometimes can help perpetuate the feeling that it's not only wrong, but you're going to get caught if you do this behavior.”
It may be too early to know the impacts of the Siddens Bening Hands-Free law, Jon Nelson said, and it’s difficult to quantify distracted driving.
“So, for an officer to be able to determine if distraction was part of the crash … can sometimes be difficult to capture in the data. But, certainly I think impacts of public policy like that make a difference,”Nelson said.
In June, the Missouri Department of Transportation broke ground on the Improve I-70 project. Gov. Parson signed the project into law this year which provides $2.8 billion to pay for production costs to widen I-70 to three lanes in each direction on the nearly 200 miles of the interstate from Blue Springs to Wentzville.
With the addition of the new lanes, Nelson hopes that crashes go down and precautions are being taken while it’s under production.
“Hopefully, when it’s all said and done, not only do we come through the construction phase of the project with better results. But, in the long term, we have a safer, more reliable I-70 for the citizens of Missouri and those who travel through our state,” he said.
Total completion of the I-70 corridor is anticipated by the end of 2030.
